German Startup Wins Initial Funding For Revolutionary Fusion Energy Machine (ft.com) 97
A German startup has secured initial funding to develop a revolutionary fusion energy machine that it hopes can provide a future source of abundant, emissions-free power. From a report: Proxima Fusion, incorporated in January, aims to build a complex device known as a stellarator and is the latest company to join the emerging fusion industry's effort to generate electricity by fusing atoms. Although the amount of funding is small at only $7.5mn, it is significant as Proxima is the first fusion company to spin out of Germany's revered Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics. The institute is the home of the world's most advanced existing stellarator in Greifswald, in eastern Germany, built by government-funded scientists over the past 27 years using supercomputers and advanced engineering.
Little known outside the world of plasma physics, a stellarator is an alternative to the better known tokamak device, pioneered by Soviet scientists in the 1950s. Both use huge magnets to suspend a floating mass of hydrogen plasma as it is heated to extreme temperatures so the atomic nuclei fuse releasing energy. Until recently nearly all funding of so-called magnetic confinement fusion has been channelled into tokamaks such as the Joint European Torus in Oxford, England, or the Sparc device being built by the Bill Gates-backed Commonwealth Fusion Systems in Massachusetts.
Little known outside the world of plasma physics, a stellarator is an alternative to the better known tokamak device, pioneered by Soviet scientists in the 1950s. Both use huge magnets to suspend a floating mass of hydrogen plasma as it is heated to extreme temperatures so the atomic nuclei fuse releasing energy. Until recently nearly all funding of so-called magnetic confinement fusion has been channelled into tokamaks such as the Joint European Torus in Oxford, England, or the Sparc device being built by the Bill Gates-backed Commonwealth Fusion Systems in Massachusetts.
Color me skeptical (Score:5, Interesting)
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How many times have we seen things like this in the last quarter of a century?
Seen what? Private funding for fusion development? Not many. But if what you mean is press releases, then yes. You're right.
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I hope these investors know what they are doing and that they are investing their own money (rather than say a mutual fund manager making the decision) so they did homework.
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Re: Color me skeptical (Score:2)
I am now... HAMMEROID!
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I hope these investors know what they are doing and that they are investing their own money (rather than say a mutual fund manager making the decision) so they did homework.
Yup. It would be tragic for some rich dude to waste a significant portion of his personal wealth on something silly ... :-)
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A mutual funds manager can not invest in start ups ...
There is a reason it is called "mutual funds".
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the Perpetual Motion Machine (of which this is merely a 21st century variation) has been a popular and enduring scam since Newton's time.
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This is no perpetual motion machine. Hydrogen (usually in isotope form) is consumed. There is no infinite supply of hydrogen.
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Stellarator predates Tokamak and was dropped because of superior results from the latter, until Tokamak hit its own wall.
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Yes, that was a documentary.
There's several companies.. (Score:3)
Including many trying to use the deformed donut thing this company is trying.
At this point, the only sort of "news" that be worth anything would be a chart showing how close every company is of reaching the goal.
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Well, that they've got funding is interesting, but a stellarator is hardly revolutionary except as a sort of abstract pun.
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Did the Wendelstein 3 D run in MS-DOS?
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Re: There's several companies.. (Score:2)
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Maybe. That's the question. Also is the stellerator a good model. Maybe. It it works, then there will be LOTS of development needed before it's practical.
I think 20 years to commercial fusion isn't an unreasonable guess for AFTER we get the first pilot plant working properly. There is a need, e.g., for construction materials that can better hold up under neutron bombardment. Either that, or a way to quickly replace large parts of the mechanism. There's the question of refining Lithium to extract the
Less than 20 years away (Score:5, Interesting)
This is not the company in the article, but just background information about fusion.
For anyone still thinking "Fusion is still 20 years away", there was a recent breakthrough in fusion technology having to do with magnetic confinement.
All fusion (terrestrial) is defined by the intersection of time, pressure, temperature and density. Current methods of fusion barely achieve the transition to fusion for these parameters because high temperature plasma is difficult to generate and contain.
The efficiency of the reaction scales with the 4th power of the magnetic field, and there's been a recent development in superconducting magnets that allows for a much stronger magnetic containment field, which puts the operating point more easily within the zone of fusion. This video [youtube.com] has a good technical explanation.
An MIT spinoff Commonwealth Fusion Systems [wikipedia.org] has started up to design the new systems and are looking into not only power generation at scale and for profit, but other design considerations such as repairability. The superconducting coils can be supported by existing structural steels, so other than the magnetic breakthrough no new technologies are needed.
Lots of other companies are looking into fusion research, but so far this is the one that's most likely to succeed.
I couldn't find a timeline for CFS, but I *believe* they are a couple of years into their 5-year plan to build a small working prototype.
Can any readers here give us an update on CFS progress?
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I believe that if fusion energy is going to happen in the next 50 years then it will be with electrostatic confinement. What happened to the Polywell Fusor? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
If there's other electrostatic confinement projects out there then I'd like to know about them.
I've seen other promising technologies for fusion, such as some kind of molten metal confinement. I believe there's been mention of this molten metal confinement mentioned on Slashdot before. They use centrifuges and/or mag
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Helion ha an interesting approach in that they're not trying for sustained fusion but doing "pulse" reactions. In the process they're avoiding a lot of the really hard problems.
13 year head start (Score:3)
Lockheed said they had a fusion reactor near ready back in 2010! [wikipedia.org]
Don't waste your time!
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For anyone still thinking "Fusion is still 20 years away", there was a recent breakthrough in fusion technology having to do with magnetic confinement.
The problem I have is not about fusion being 20 or 30 or 50 years away. The problem I have is: So then what? I've come to realize that, in a conventional thermal nuclear reactor, the actual reactor part is more or less irrelevant. I mean, it's obviously important to make the whole thing work but, technically speaking, you could replace the reactor itself in a typical nuclear power plant with a big coal or natural gas fire, or some sort of geothermal heat accumulator, or a solar thermal setup of a magic port
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Because fusion is radiologically much safer than fission these plants can be build right next to or even in a city making it possible to use the otherwise wasted heat for district heating, something the old Soviets already did with regular nuclear reactors. (build it right next to a town)
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Because fusion is radiologically much safer than fission these plants can be build right next to or even in a city making it possible to use the otherwise wasted heat for district heating, something the old Soviets already did with regular nuclear reactors. (build it right next to a town)
Except heating is not really that much of a problem in urban centers. Get better insulation if it's a problem. The cooling is the problem. If you're using the river that runs through a city for that cooling, that means the heat goes into the river, then it comes out of the river into the air (or at least reduces the cooling effect of the river on the rest of the city). Overall, probably not a net positive.
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There are examples of using municipal waste water to cool existing nuclear reactors. See: Palo Verde in Arizona [wikipedia.org] - not exactly a region really known for ample free-flowing water.
By the way, Palo Verde is the largest nuclear generating station in the United States*, so apparently this solution scales given a close enough municipal wastewater system being nearby.
* may change when Point Vogtle Units 3 and 4 are at full power in Georgia late this year / early next year.
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By the way, Palo Verde is the largest nuclear generating station in the United States*, so apparently this solution scales given a close enough municipal wastewater system being nearby.
Not a given you can rely on. What exactly is the plant supposed to do once Arizonians are done draining the Colorado river dry and eliminating their underground aquifers? As it stands, the wikipedia article notes that this is the only nuclear power plant not near a large body of water and there's a good reason for that. It appears that it takes the wastewater from about 4 million people to the tune of about 18 gallons per day per person and evaporates it. All well and good, but what else could have been don
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I mean, all energy "generation" is just tapping the gradient between a high and a low concentration of energy. Coal plant, fusion plant, solar panel, all the same thing. What's the point? What's the point of anything?
Say hi to Arkady and Bazarov for me!
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I mean, all energy "generation" is just tapping the gradient between a high and a low concentration of energy. Coal plant, fusion plant, solar panel, all the same thing. What's the point? What's the point of anything?
I'm just comparing against, for example, wind power. With nuclear generation, you have a reactor, whether it's fission, or fusion, or magical unicorn gas, then you have an enormous steam plant complete with a either some really, really enormous cooling systems, or direct cooling from a large body of water or river which drives turbines, which drive generators. With wind power, you just have the generator with a tower and some fan blades taking the place of the enormous steam plant. It seems like a no-braine
Re:Less than 20 years away (Score:4, Insightful)
Always be suspicious of "no-brainers."
Wind turbines are about 20-40% efficient at converting mechanical energy from wind into electricity. A typical coal fired plant is around 33% efficient at converting the chemical energy in coal into electricity. Typical fission plants are around 33-37% efficient, but thermal generation efficiency is related to temperature, so more modern ones can get above 45%.
Despite the name, thermodynamics tends to be a pretty universal factor, even when it doesn't seem like there's any "thermo" involved.
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"maybe it uses less nuclear fuel and produces less nuclear waste"
Not "maybe" - it's for sure. Moreover, these improvements are crucial
Also, you forgot to mention better security. With fission, you need to act to stop the process. With fusion, you cease containing the plasma and the process stops.
Frankly, the problem I have with your comment is that it's just such a rant.
Sure, heat is the most "stupid" form of energy. At the moment we have a better alternative, let's abandon fusion. But the moment is far, fa
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"maybe it uses less nuclear fuel and produces less nuclear waste"
Not "maybe" - it's for sure. Moreover, these improvements are crucial
Also, you forgot to mention better security. With fission, you need to act to stop the process. With fusion, you cease containing the plasma and the process stops.
Those things are nice improvements over current fission power plants, of course. In any world where you have a choice between either fission or fusion, it does seem that you should choose fusion over fission, to be sure. That assumes a false choice where you can only choose one form of nuclear power or another however. The simple fact is that both fission and fusion are in the same class of systems with some of the same limitations that are not going to be overcome simply by using a different nuclear reacti
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as for wind, I HOPE you mean offshore wind farms.
It remains to be seen how they scale up and how they fare in terms of environmental footprint, economic viability, and reliability.
How much steel is needed for an offshore wind farm, what backup capacities must be available, what's the efficiency of the energy storage systems...
Yes, wind power is great, but not as great as it sounds, I guess.
"(fusion) will just be an incremental improvement over what we already have"
Agreed.
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as for wind, I HOPE you mean offshore wind farms.
I wasn't being specific as to onshore or off shore. Why?
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In populated areas, wind farms destroy the landscape, an externality that is huge, IMO.
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I've never personally found that to be the case. Not any more so than any other human development and that's all over the place. Anyway, that's pretty much just pure NIMBYism.
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High beta designs extract energy from magnetic fields. No steam plant, turbines...etc.
Are they any better than theoretical at this point?
Wind is good but diffuse requiring a lot of land and mass in for what is ultimately unpredictable intermittent output.
It tends to be predictable enough in the aggregate. It does not really require a lot of land. Sure, you need to space the wind turbines enough, but they don't really use any land except for what is directly under them. As for the mass they use up, I assume you're talking about the concrete pad? The amount of concrete used is more of a design issue than anything else. That could probably be cut down tremendously. Plus, there's the argument that is frequently
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Just the nuclear waste issue and materials needed for fuel should be enough to get us to go to fusion instead of fission.
No more digging up radioactive crap, purifying radioactive crap, disposing of radioactive crap, cataloging and tracking radioactive crap to make sure it all ends up where it's supposed to be, etc. And that's before even a single watt of electricity is generated.
Then, after you generate your fission-based electricity, we have more radioactive crap that we have to look after and deal with
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No more digging up radioactive crap, purifying radioactive crap, disposing of radioactive crap, cataloging and tracking radioactive crap to make sure it all ends up where it's supposed to be, etc. And that's before even a single watt of electricity is generated.
Well, that won't be completely eliminated, just reduced. Still, if it's a choice between fission or fusion, then definitely fusion. The problem comes when you consider other options alongside fission and fusion and I don't think fusion wins out for power generation in any except niche applications.
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And by the way, it's still mostly useable fuel except for the "neutron poisons" inside that absorb neutrons and slow the fission chain that we don't bother to reuse because building a reprocessing facility sits at the intersection of being wildly politically unpopular and ungodly expensive.
That is complete bullshit.
And by the way, it's still mostly useable fuel
No it is not. No idea who spread this stupid myth, and even more less an idea how people can be so dumb to believe it.
You know what a beer is, right?
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That's a very nice rant, which is completely invalidated by this. [world-nuclear.org]
Used fuel still contains about 96% of its original uranium, of which the fissionable U-235 content has been reduced to less than 1%. About 3% of the used fuel comprises waste products and the remaining 1% is plutonium (Pu) produced while the fuel was in the reactor.
I wouldn't think it would need to be said, but consuming beer is nowhere the same as a closed nuclear fuel cycle, and you seem like kind of a dumbass for attempting to draw some kind of rhetorical equals sign there.
Here's the part you seem to be missing: when uranium undergoes fission, it creates shit that absorbs neutrons, which slows reactivity. Over time, that shit builds up and reduces neutron flux. After a time, you cannot increase rea
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Sorry, you are wrong.
Perhaps you want to read what you quoted? And comprehend it?
Used fuel still contains about 96% of its original uranium, of which the fissionable U-235 content has been reduced to less than 1%. About 3% of the used fuel comprises waste products and the remaining 1% is plutonium (Pu) produced while the fuel was in the reactor.
I took the liberty to make the relevant fact in your quote bold.
Are you an idiot? Obviously an pro nuke idiot. But even a pro nuke idiot could learn the basics about
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And by the way, it's still mostly useable fuel except for the "neutron poisons" inside that absorb neutrons and slow the fission chain that we don't bother to reuse because building a reprocessing facility sits at the intersection of being wildly politically unpopular and ungodly expensive.
This statement is partly true and partly untrue.
The untrue part is that spent fuel is "still mostly useable fuel except for the "neutron poisons"".
Fresh fuel is (these days) a maximum of about 5% U-235 and 95% U-238. When it is burned the U-235 is fissioned, plutonium is formed by neutron capture by the U-238, and some of that plutonium is fissioned before the fuel is spent. When the fuel is spent it is not because if is full of "neutron poisons" but because the fissile content of the fuel has fallen too lo
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The problem I have is: So then what?
Fusion power vs coal/gas power? It's the same as electric cars vs ICE cars - they're both personal transportation, in the same format. The entire point is to be rid of using fossil fuels to generate energy, in a bid to prevent harmful (to humanity) climate change.
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Fusion will revolutionize space travel.
The big gains of fusion are: the fuel is basically available everywhere. Aka you are not depending on possible hostile foreign nations.
Regarding space travel: the goal is to minimize the fusion "engine", not to get 10 times as much heat as from another plant type.
The team at the JPL working on the Vasimir plasma engine is working to convert it into a fusion engine. They think a year or two and they have it.
Yes, Science Fiction in the happening. While the name sounds su
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The team at the JPL working on the Vasimir plasma engine is working to convert it into a fusion engine. They think a year or two and they have it.
Oh my, citation needed. Given that there is no fusion power in existence converting a laboratory Vasimir electrical propulsion system into a fusion engine is impossible in a year, or at any time, until at least one operating fusion power plant exists. I doubt any team at JPL made such a claim.
Fusion energy will be needed if the outer regions of the solar system are ever exploited, but the time until a usable fusion engine might be built would be decades (at least) after the we have operating fusion power pl
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Oh my, citation needed.
Certainly not.
Google is your friend.
Given that there is no fusion power in existence converting a laboratory Vasimir electrical propulsion system into a fusion engine is impossible ... ta ta! Plasma.
Lol. Seems you do not know much about fusion.
Hint: it starts with
Perhaps you have a problem with words: a fusion engine is a rocket engine where the plasma is heated up enough to undergo fusion. It is for funk sake not a net positive electric power plant - I guess you mixed that somehow
Thus e-static and that plus mag are interesting. (Score:2)
That's why near-vacuum electrost
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and all of it, along with 4/5th of the initial 5x, as heat at hot water / house heating temperatures.
Make that essentially all of it that didn't come out as electricity or get consumed in excitation (and ever much of the latter) comes out as useful-temperature heat.
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You can bet that if it was useful as a weapon we'd have had fusion reactors 20 years ago.
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A lot of the inertial confinement fusion research is basically a nice way of disguising thermonuclear weapon research. Since the comprehensive test ban treaty, most nuclear testing is banned, but fusion research is a convenient way of keeping some research going without violating the treaty. The US National Ignition Facility, while nominally a fusion power research project, is officially part of the nuclear stewardship program. IOW, it's part of the research program to keep our nuclear weapons reliable w
What is wrong with fission again? (Score:2, Interesting)
All this work on getting to nuclear fusion for some future clean energy is fine so long as it is not distracting from solutions available today. Germany is in a serious energy shortage right now, they need energy in a matter of months or years, not decades. We saw the UAE start construction on a new nuclear power reactor in 2012 and had in online in 2020. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
While UAE was planning new nuclear power plants we saw Germany planning to close its existing nuclear power plants and
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The best time to plant a tree was thirty years ago
Second best time is today
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1: Fission is a waste of money. Proven time and again. Smaller plants are even worse.
2: Still inherently unsafe to operate - Even the latest untested designs. This is the main driver of running costs. Multiplied by the number of plants makes this a nightmare cost, not to mention the risk of radioactive poisoning.
3: Spent fuel is not solved at all. Also very expensive to bury. Multiplied by the number of plants makes this a nightmare cost.
4: Decommissioning costs are not even factored in the abov
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1: Fission is a waste of money. Proven time and again. Smaller plants are even worse.
Nope, but feel free to bring your "proof". France has been enjoying pretty cheap electricity for the past 50 years. Of course, you can point out the anomaly of 2022 where they had to import 3.7% of their electricity for the first time, but so far this seems to be an outlier data point.
France has also been enjoying electricity which emits very low CO2 for the past 50 years. Just for that, it is definitely not a waste of money.
2: Still inherently unsafe to operate - Even the latest untested designs.
The civil nuclear industry is the one with one of the lowest death rate per kWh gen [ourworldindata.org]
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Nope, but feel free to bring your "proof". France has been enjoying pretty cheap electricity for the past 50 years.
You are mixing up the rate per kwh you have to pay with what it costs to make the power.
The power in France is one of the most expensive in Europe. Only the rate you pay is low, as the rest is paid with your Taxes Perhaps you want to check the wiki page of the EDF :P
The rest of your post is just nonsense and factually false.
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Germany is in a serious energy shortage right now, they need energy in a matter of months or years, not decades.
And how do you come to that stupid idea?
You have absolutely no clue about Germany.
I mean: you have no reason to make such stories up, or do you have one? So? What is wrong with you?
Germany is of the biggest power exporters in Europe. We have close to 50% overcapacity. And export accordingly depending on market prices.
No idea, I always thought you are "just an idiot". But your strange ideas about
Yawn (Score:5, Informative)
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Call me when they reach breakeven and start selling devices.
Precisely.
I'd even be happy with some kind of experimental device that shows the theory even works. Sure, we can produce fusion but the energy out is far less than the energy in. Someone can prove the theory of a jet turbine engine with a common turbocharger off an airplane engine and putting a simple combustion chamber in place of all the complicated bits for a reciprocating engine. Fuel goes in, thrust comes out. Demonstrate that and we've got at least an idea that a jet engine can work. Similar kind
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We are seeing plans of combined fission-fusion systems in order to produce enough tritium and neutrons to maintain fusion. If that's the case then why are we bothering with the fusion part?
Because they use neutrons generated in fusion to run a sustainable fission reaction with "non-fissile" isotopes of uranium and/or thorium, so you don't need to do an expensive uranium enrichment step. Or to breed fissile isotopes for traditional designs. Currently, it's non-economical; centrifuges are... well, not cheap, but cheaper than fusion.
The other thing it can do is provide a different way to reprocess spent fission fuel; it has the advantage of "burning off" some of the nastier transuranic isotopes.
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Because they use neutrons generated in fusion to run a sustainable fission reaction with "non-fissile" isotopes of uranium and/or thorium, so you don't need to do an expensive uranium enrichment step. Or to breed fissile isotopes for traditional designs. Currently, it's non-economical; centrifuges are... well, not cheap, but cheaper than fusion.
A similar kind of breeding has been proposed for fusion reactors by having a lithium "jacket" around the fusion reactor core to take in the neutrons to create tritium or something to be used as fusion fuel. I would guess it is possible to use fusion to breed thorium into uranium, then extract the tritium from the fission reactions. How is that helping things? There's no shortage of thorium that would drive any need for this. There's no shortage of neutrons in a fission reactor to breed fuel. That just
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Things have changed dramatically. Superconductors can be used for the main magnets now. That wasn't possible 10 years back.
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Hey, I think you're on the wrong web site. This one is "news for nerds," even though sometimes it seems more like "political bickering for aging Americans."
I've got one that's all about products you can buy *right now* though. Here it is. [amazon.com]
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Ah, you're a fan of central planning? Avoid the redundancy by having an authority assign what everyone is going to work on?
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I think they need a partner like Rockwell. (Score:3)
This company needs tto partner with Rockwell and integrate the retro encabulator in with their QI Stellerators vs Tokamaks.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Sounds good (Score:2)
The X7 is pretty advanced, although research is not yet done. But they have most of what is needed and it works in an experimental set-up. If these people feel it is a good time to slowly start with the industrialization of this tech, I have no doubt that it is indeed the time for that.
But remember that this does not mean "fusion in 5 years". Without having seen their plans, it is quite possible that they go for 20 or 30 years for a working prototype that can then be optimized and commercialized, i.e. marke
Helion (Score:2)
I saw a video the other week on Real Engineering [youtube.com] of a design I've never seen before from this company called Helion. This honestly seems like a more practical and scalable fusion design than the others I've seen so far.
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Cool thanks, I'll check that out.
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OK I listened to it and I have to say, I was really put off by his mocking attitude. I don't know enough about the physics to address his argument directly. But his tone makes it seem like he's got something personal against Helion and so I am less likely to take his argument seriously.
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Define scalable.
Many machines side by side, or a bigger machine?
But I agree, they Helion looks pretty decent.
Another alternative fusion device (Score:1)
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The economics are doubtful (Score:2)
To compete with solar power and batteries at today's prices, a fusion power plant would need to be 25% cheaper than a nuclear fission power plant is today. That's a stretch, especially to achieve on a massive scale in the next 25 years. And if we're looking 25 years ahead, solar will be continuing to get cheaper. By then, solar may well be cheaper than the non-nuclear side of a fission or fusion plant (plumbing, turbines, cooling system, generator). At that point, there is no hope for fission or fusion: eve
nuclear fission is cheaper than solar (Score:2)
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Let me know the final cost when it's finished. Recent nuclear plants have gone way over schedule and way over budget. e.g., Vogtle 3&4 [gpb.org]
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To compete with solar power and batteries at today's prices, a fusion power plant would need to be 25% cheaper than a nuclear fission power plant is today. That's a stretch, especially to achieve on a massive scale in the next 25 years. And if we're looking 25 years ahead, solar will be continuing to get cheaper.
Solar is a bad deal all around compared to alternatives like wind and hydro. There is no energy storage solution available at an acceptable cost with current technology able to fill any role other than that of short term buffer.
Still a huge amount of untapped potential for hydro both in terms of new plants and modernized turbines and for wind above 100m the untapped potential is massive.
Solar power plus storage currently costs $1,808 per kW installed according to U.S. national modeling data, which is pretty conservative. Large-scale solar projects produce power about 28% of the time, so you would need about 3.2 kW of solar+storage to produce as much power as a nuclear plant running 90% of the time.
Percentages are averaged over the year. It's nice that energy is cheap during daylight on a clear summer day when people
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No offense.
But you should seriously look into how grids actually work.
Besides the production cost per kwh there are many more factors going into the equation(s), which makes laymen calculations like yours so wrong, it is not even funny.
1) A dispatch able plant, does not matter what technology, is run and marketed completely different than e.g. a solar plant
2) E.g. If I build a fusion plant, I know I can sell power at night - obviously not with a solar plant
3) Battery storage, or other storage, is basically
Typical slashvertisement (Score:2)
Show us third party tested and proven hardware or eat a shotgun.